InTalkNational 2020!

This was my first InTALKnational event and I had a great experience. The event started with participants being assigned randomly to a table. I was delighted by the large attendance despite the heavy rains. Five participants, from various countries were assigned to my table - Eiko from Japan, Ananth from India, Rupert from England, Yuri from Myanmar and Phoebe from Thailand. While Eiko, Ananth and Rupert were graduate students, Yuri and Phuong were undergraduates. My table was a little quiet and awkward until I told everybody to introduce themselves by telling their name, major and hobby. We then participated in an icebreaker question, where each person must state two facts about themselves--one true and one false--and the others must guess the correct one. This lightened the mood on the table and everybody started to feel comfortable. 

The participants were unsure about the agenda for the event until my fellow ISAB members Mihn and Lauren introduced the board and listed out the plan for the night. 

The event took off with a gallery walk where each group gathered around a question written on a poster. Each one would discuss their thoughts and views with the group and then write down their answers on a piece of paper and drop it in a box. After around 7-8 minutes each group would move to the next question and repeat the same process. My discussion with the group was enriching and eye opening. I got the opportunity to understand different perspectives of participants on questions.

The idea of this exercise was to gather the opinion of international students regarding various matters on campus and then use this data to implement changes which would improve the campus climate for international students. 

After the gallery walk session, everyone got delicious Indian food for dinner. A participant on my table told me about how the wait for dinner was totally worth it! Meanwhile, we had two officers from the UCSB Police Department visit us. They gave us an informative talk about how International students can always rely on the police for their safety. They warned us about online scams and frauds and comforted us by assuring that the police would never revoke an international student’s visa. The talk was followed by a question and answer session where some common confusions were clarified.

The participants soon left after grabbing some second servings of food thus marking the completion of a successful event. A lot of them expressed their gratitude and acknowledged ISAB’s efforts for hosting the event. Personally, this was a memorable InTALKnational for me. I would also like to thank my colleagues and facilitators for putting in the hard work to organize the event. Hopefully, together we can make the campus a better place for international students.